I’m A Virgo: Boots Riley’s Critique and Product of White Cultural and Economic Hegemony

Chapter proposal for Black on White on Screen
‘I’m A Virgo: A Critique and Product of White Cultural and Economic Hegemony’

By
Dr. Andrew Stubbs

This chapter analyses the scripted television series I’m A Virgo (Amazon, 2023) as both a political text, one made by a self-declared radical socialist filmmaker, Boots Riley, and as a product made for Amazon. Taking a cultural production approach, the chapter analyses Riley’s intentions as they are reflected in critical and extratextual discourse alongside its industrial context as a show that is financed and distributed by Amazon Instant Video.

The chapter teases out relationships between I’m a Virgo and Riley’s previous work, the feature film Sorry to Bother You, as well as between I’m a Virgo and contemporary Black screen media production more broadly. The chapter argues that, like Sorry to Bother You, I’m a Virgo sometimes portrays capitalism as a dehumanizing and exploitative force that stymies resistance and is harmful to Black people especially but also to even people who appear to benefit from it (Thomas, 2023). The chapter also considers whether I’m a Virgo constitutes an example of Afrosurrealism, akin to feature films and series such as Atlanta, Sorry to Bother You, Get Out, Us and Random Acts of Flyness, that imagines new possibilities for Black lived experiences (see, for instance, Francis, 2023, p.57). At the same time, however, the chapter argues that I’m a Virgo has many of the hallmarks of high-end series geared towards fee-paying middle-class and mostly White subscribers and is, thus, arguably symptomatic of the neoliberal capitalism that Riley seems to want to critique. I’m a Virgo is prestigious, “cinematic” and bingeable, while the show’s depiction of difference, as represented not only by the race of the characters but also by their size and speed, may be symptomatic of neoliberalism’s privileging of difference as a form of branding, which Herman Gray describes as limiting collective struggles by making recognition and visibility an end goal in itself (2013, p.771-772).

Indicative Bibliography
Austin, Thomas, 2023, 'Horse-People and White Voices: Neoliberalism and Race in Sorry to Bother You', in Senses of Cinema, 01 May https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2023/feature-articles/horse-people-and-white-voices-neoliberalism-and-race-in-sorry-to-bother-you/ [Accessed: 02 October 2023]
Dyer, Richard. 2017. White: Twentieth Anniversary Edition, London: Routledge.
Gates, Racquel J. 2018. Double Negative. Durham: Duke University Press.
Gillespie, Michael Boyce. 2016. Film Blackness: American Cinema and the Idea of Black Film. London: Duke University Press.
Gray, Herman S. 2005. Cultural Moves: African Americans and the Politics of Representation. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Great, Artel and Guerrero, Ed (eds.). 2023. Black Cinema & Visual Culture: Art and Politics in the 21st Century. London: Routledge.
Havens, Timothy. 2013. Black Television Travels: African American Media around the Globe. New York: New York University Press.
Nygaard, Taylor and Lagerway, Jorie. 2020. Horrible White People: Gender, Genre, and Television's Precarious Whiteness. New York: New York University Press